If Democrat Senator Max Baucus was not drunk while giving this speech, he's in really bad shape.
If he is this rambling and incoherent when sober, maybe he should drink more so he could have an excuse for sounding like a drunken idiot for over five minutes on the Senate floor.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Send Democrats to Greenland
It seems just yesterday that Al Gore directed our attention to Greenland, for which we should all be grateful. Greenland artifacts of Viking habitation demonstrate that the Medieval Warm Period was, indeed, warmer than the present.
However, Al Gore and his Acolytes are nothing if not history challenged. To them "unprecedented" warming means the end of the inconvenient cooling in 1975. For awhile they tried to say that present warming was the most in the past 1,000 years, but then Mann's "hockey stick" was shattered and they had to concede the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1350 AD, well within the past 1,000 years).
Then it was unprecented warming for the past 400 years, which conveniently begins during the Little Ice Age. There sure wasn't much warming then.
Unfortunately for Al, science marches on and recent climate records for Greenland show that it was warmer, and got warmer faster, in the 1930's than our current period. (Click here for the report)
This chart of Greenland climate change for the past 170 years show that the 1930's warming was greater and faster than now.
What's a warming alarmist to do?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wind Power is Stupid
There is a book out that for me is a must read: "The Wind Farm Scam" by John Etherington.
The following is my comment on wind farms:
Wind power is such a stupid idea it is no wonder it is so popular with the left. It is expensive, unreliable, requires 100% conventional generation backup, kills endangered species birds, visually pollutes scenic vistas, and must be located far away from population centers.
To “solve” this last objection, the most ludicrous plan I’ve seen for wind power was first for New York city, and recently for San Francisco, to install urban wind turbines – with no apparent appreciation to their noise and vibration characteristics, loss of generating capacity because of wind drag from buildings and the necessity to use relatively small wind turbines, and the unsafe conditions caused by mechanical stresses on the buildings upon which they are erected.
In farcical attempts to design ways to overcome the intermittent power generation factor – it is an exceptional wind farm that produces at 25% of rated capacity – there are proposals to use excess energy generated during the night to compress air (or to store energy in some other mechanical way) to generate power when the wind doesn’t. Of course these alternative power schemes will be very expensive and, as yet, have not been created to operate in the real world.
I lived nine years within sight (but thankfully not sound) of the wind farm at the Altamont Pass, California, and observed that most of the time none of the turbines were turning, and when some were, a lot were not because they were down for maintenance. About the only thing they did well was kill eagles and hawks – thousands each year. I would hazard a guess that more energy went into creating the Altamont Pass wind farm than was generated by it, and that its operation never made, and never will, make economic sense.
The following is my comment on wind farms:
Wind power is such a stupid idea it is no wonder it is so popular with the left. It is expensive, unreliable, requires 100% conventional generation backup, kills endangered species birds, visually pollutes scenic vistas, and must be located far away from population centers.
To “solve” this last objection, the most ludicrous plan I’ve seen for wind power was first for New York city, and recently for San Francisco, to install urban wind turbines – with no apparent appreciation to their noise and vibration characteristics, loss of generating capacity because of wind drag from buildings and the necessity to use relatively small wind turbines, and the unsafe conditions caused by mechanical stresses on the buildings upon which they are erected.
In farcical attempts to design ways to overcome the intermittent power generation factor – it is an exceptional wind farm that produces at 25% of rated capacity – there are proposals to use excess energy generated during the night to compress air (or to store energy in some other mechanical way) to generate power when the wind doesn’t. Of course these alternative power schemes will be very expensive and, as yet, have not been created to operate in the real world.
I lived nine years within sight (but thankfully not sound) of the wind farm at the Altamont Pass, California, and observed that most of the time none of the turbines were turning, and when some were, a lot were not because they were down for maintenance. About the only thing they did well was kill eagles and hawks – thousands each year. I would hazard a guess that more energy went into creating the Altamont Pass wind farm than was generated by it, and that its operation never made, and never will, make economic sense.
Nail in Man-Caused Global Warming Coffin
I have often mentioned that previous periods were warmer than the present.
Further, that these warmer periods did not cause runaway warming, although from all that the current alarmists say, they should have. If man-caused warming triggers positive feedbacks - increased water vapor traps more heat, more heat increases water vapor and generates more release of CO2 from oceans and methane from thawing permafrost - then previous warming should have done the same.
It didn't.
More proof of that, or the lack of runaway warming, is clearly shown in a recent video.
The video is great, but for quiet contemplation of the graphs showing previous periods of greater natural warming compared to the present, go to "Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data."
Further, that these warmer periods did not cause runaway warming, although from all that the current alarmists say, they should have. If man-caused warming triggers positive feedbacks - increased water vapor traps more heat, more heat increases water vapor and generates more release of CO2 from oceans and methane from thawing permafrost - then previous warming should have done the same.
It didn't.
More proof of that, or the lack of runaway warming, is clearly shown in a recent video.
The video is great, but for quiet contemplation of the graphs showing previous periods of greater natural warming compared to the present, go to "Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data."
Click on this graph showing periods of climate change during the past 10,000 years. Of interest are the two periods of greater warming during the past 2,000 years - the Medieval Warm Period of about 1,000 years ago, and the even warmer Roman Period at year "0". So much for Al Gore's claim that the current warming is "unprecedented."
Obviously Al learned from Bill Clinton how to parse the truth. What Al meant to say is the current warming is unprecedented if you only look at the last 1,000 years, and then only if you use the discredited "hockey stick" prepared by Michael Mann of "Climategate" fame that eliminated both the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350AD) and the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850AD).
In other words the current warming is unprecedented if you only go back to the Little Ice Age, or if you hide or overlook all the previous warming periods. For example, the graph shows at least a dozen in the past 10,000 years warmer than the present.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Climategate - FactCheck.Org is Clueless
I have previously doubted the neutrality of FactCheck.Org, and their "fact checking" of Climategate added to my doubts. Rather than demonstrating a "nose" for facts, they mischaracterized the position of man-caused global warming skeptics, and then proceeded to knock their strawman down.
They said: "Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming."
That's not what the skeptics say. We say that the scientific misconduct raises doubts about the science of man-made global warming. It's unprofessional of FactCheck.Org to charge skeptics with thinking that information about a segment of the science is proof of its complete fabrication. Just as we skeptics believe that the rise in CO2 since 1950, and the fluctuations in cooling and warming in that period, invalidate alarmists claims that CO2 drives global temperatures.
The following is my reply to FactCheck.Org: (with some minor alterations for grammar and to add a dig about Al Gore lying about the emails)
As you possibly don’t know, or are taking pains to not know, the point is that the science underlying the validity of reconstructing global temperatures by means of tree-ring and other proxies has been placed in doubt by the actions of Drs. Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. The tree-rings post 1960 show cooling or no warming when compared to instrumental records. This divergence led Mann, Briffa, and others to drop the tree-ring temperatures and replace them with instrument readings without disclosing their divergence. The point in challenging this is quite simple: if current tree-ring temperatures don’t agree with current instrument temperatures, why is there any confidence that tree rings were good proxies for temperature in the preceding 1000 or 2000 years?
This question has far-reaching implications. Mann et al say that current warming is unprecedented. Al Gore showed Mann’s hockey stick in “An Inconvenient Truth” to make this very point. The hockey stick obliterated the warming of the Medieval Warm Period, and the cooling of the Little Ice Age, just as tree rings now don’t show recent warming.
If the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the present, as evidence of vineyards in England and pastures and farming in Viking Greenland show – and a Harvard/Smithsonian study by Soon et al of 240 climate studies worldwide show it was warmer then than now – then the positive feedback from increased water vapor trapping heat in the troposphere, thereby causing runaway warming, should have happened 1,000 years ago, and the runaway warming forecasted for this century should be part of our historical record.
Of course if its effects were as dangerous as forecasted, we wouldn’t be here to read the record.
Catastrophic warming didn’t happen then, and it didn’t in the very warm Roman Warm Period or in the earlier, even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum. What did happen naturally was that the Ice Age ended, sea levels rose over 400 feet in the past 10,000 years – an average of over four feet a century compared to the eight inches sea levels rose in the past century – and that humankind progressed and prospered during the warm periods and suffered famine, violent storms, and pestilence during the intervening cold periods.
All of these dramatic climate changes happened naturally. In the past two centuries 30-year periods of warming have alternated with 30-year periods of cooling, possibly caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. NASA records show that the United States had warming from 1915 to 1945 equal to or greater than the recent warming, and that the cooling 1945 to 1975 spurred predictions of catastrophic global cooling even as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased steadily and rapidly.
Glaciers were in retreat during the 1800’s, long before the rapid industrialization beginning around 1950 started the rapid rise of CO2. Mount Kilimanjaro, contrary to Al Gore’s posturing, lost most of its ice cap prior to 1953 from sublimation - which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures - not warming, since at the elevation of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap the temperature hardly ever of never rises above freezing.
One climate alarmist is on record in the Climategate emails stating that it is a “travesty” that the lack of warming during the past decade can’t be explained. Al Gore denigrates the emails, saying that they are all over ten years old, even though many are recent.
It’s a travesty that your fact checking missed the critical points the exposed emails uncovered. I would have expected better from an unbiased pursuit of the truth.
They said: "Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming."
That's not what the skeptics say. We say that the scientific misconduct raises doubts about the science of man-made global warming. It's unprofessional of FactCheck.Org to charge skeptics with thinking that information about a segment of the science is proof of its complete fabrication. Just as we skeptics believe that the rise in CO2 since 1950, and the fluctuations in cooling and warming in that period, invalidate alarmists claims that CO2 drives global temperatures.
The following is my reply to FactCheck.Org: (with some minor alterations for grammar and to add a dig about Al Gore lying about the emails)
As you possibly don’t know, or are taking pains to not know, the point is that the science underlying the validity of reconstructing global temperatures by means of tree-ring and other proxies has been placed in doubt by the actions of Drs. Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. The tree-rings post 1960 show cooling or no warming when compared to instrumental records. This divergence led Mann, Briffa, and others to drop the tree-ring temperatures and replace them with instrument readings without disclosing their divergence. The point in challenging this is quite simple: if current tree-ring temperatures don’t agree with current instrument temperatures, why is there any confidence that tree rings were good proxies for temperature in the preceding 1000 or 2000 years?
This question has far-reaching implications. Mann et al say that current warming is unprecedented. Al Gore showed Mann’s hockey stick in “An Inconvenient Truth” to make this very point. The hockey stick obliterated the warming of the Medieval Warm Period, and the cooling of the Little Ice Age, just as tree rings now don’t show recent warming.
If the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the present, as evidence of vineyards in England and pastures and farming in Viking Greenland show – and a Harvard/Smithsonian study by Soon et al of 240 climate studies worldwide show it was warmer then than now – then the positive feedback from increased water vapor trapping heat in the troposphere, thereby causing runaway warming, should have happened 1,000 years ago, and the runaway warming forecasted for this century should be part of our historical record.
Of course if its effects were as dangerous as forecasted, we wouldn’t be here to read the record.
Catastrophic warming didn’t happen then, and it didn’t in the very warm Roman Warm Period or in the earlier, even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum. What did happen naturally was that the Ice Age ended, sea levels rose over 400 feet in the past 10,000 years – an average of over four feet a century compared to the eight inches sea levels rose in the past century – and that humankind progressed and prospered during the warm periods and suffered famine, violent storms, and pestilence during the intervening cold periods.
All of these dramatic climate changes happened naturally. In the past two centuries 30-year periods of warming have alternated with 30-year periods of cooling, possibly caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. NASA records show that the United States had warming from 1915 to 1945 equal to or greater than the recent warming, and that the cooling 1945 to 1975 spurred predictions of catastrophic global cooling even as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased steadily and rapidly.
Glaciers were in retreat during the 1800’s, long before the rapid industrialization beginning around 1950 started the rapid rise of CO2. Mount Kilimanjaro, contrary to Al Gore’s posturing, lost most of its ice cap prior to 1953 from sublimation - which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures - not warming, since at the elevation of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap the temperature hardly ever of never rises above freezing.
One climate alarmist is on record in the Climategate emails stating that it is a “travesty” that the lack of warming during the past decade can’t be explained. Al Gore denigrates the emails, saying that they are all over ten years old, even though many are recent.
It’s a travesty that your fact checking missed the critical points the exposed emails uncovered. I would have expected better from an unbiased pursuit of the truth.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Tiger's Eleven
I had to claim the prize for being the last blogger to post about Tiger Woods.
The latest "news" article says his mistress total is now eleven.
For awhile I thought Tiger was a Democrat plant to take attention away from "Climategate," but now I realize that the main stream media needs no distraction to ignore Climategate. They only cover the news that suits their agenda.
Tiger's next will be number twelve.
I wonder if he will find they are "Cheaper by the Dozen?"
The latest "news" article says his mistress total is now eleven.
For awhile I thought Tiger was a Democrat plant to take attention away from "Climategate," but now I realize that the main stream media needs no distraction to ignore Climategate. They only cover the news that suits their agenda.
Tiger's next will be number twelve.
I wonder if he will find they are "Cheaper by the Dozen?"
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Climategate - Cherry Picking
A Salon article on Bjørn Lomborg's "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming," criticizes Mr. Lomborg for "cherry picking" support for his position that resources spent combating global warming could be spent better elsewhere. Eban Goodstein, the Salon reviewer, discredits Mr. Lomborg's benefit-cost analysis for using the most likely outcome, rather than the most dire. Without saying "precautionary principle," that is what Mr. Goodstein is advocating.
To fight fire with fire, the use of the precautionary principle leads to cherry picking the worst-case scenario from the spectrum of possible outcomes. Again and again in his criticism, Mr. Goodstein finds one, maybe two, examples of a prediction that is far beyond the realm of even the IPCC's expectations. Not surprisingly, Dr. James Hansen is the author of most of them, and Al Gore concurs.
However, the central fact is that Hansen/Gore et al construct their apocalyptic prognostications on an element of climate change that has not been demonstrated in any recent periods of even higher temperatures. Apparently they believe - they can't know - the concept that the very limited ability of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures will trigger "positive forcings" - the release of vast quantities of methane from frozen tundra deposits - and those temperatures will then increase far beyond expectations.
Other equally eminent scientists have theorized, on the basis of past warming periods, that negative forcings will dampen, not accentuate, the warming trend. Considering that there is evidence for expecting negative forcing, and none for positive forcing, Mr. Lomborg's position is far more likely.
Recent headlines also add weight to this. The bright light shining on the Climate Research Unit e-mails and records liberated in the UK this week has disclosed that the top "hockey stick" scientists, Drs. Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and others, cherry picked (there's those words again) climate proxies to exaggerate current warming and to understate historical warming. In particular, proxies were used and abused to suppress or eliminate the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period of roughly 800-1300 AD.
The Medieval Warm Period cannot be allowed to stand if the current warming alarmists are to prevail, because the positive forcings their predictions require did not appear when natural climate change gave them the opportunity. In fact, one of the Warmists unknowingly confided to a warming skeptic that "we have to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period."
Unfortunately for the Warmists, the evidences of the Medieval Warming Period, and the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum which preceded it by 4,000 years, are abundant and irrefutable.
What really must be eliminated is the cherry picking the Warmists use to accuse skeptical scientists of cherry picking, and then their corruption of peer reviews to hide their ethical lapses.
Just the tip of their unethical activities was exposed this week, and much more is coming out as investigators pore over the e-mails.
"Tighten your seat belts."
To fight fire with fire, the use of the precautionary principle leads to cherry picking the worst-case scenario from the spectrum of possible outcomes. Again and again in his criticism, Mr. Goodstein finds one, maybe two, examples of a prediction that is far beyond the realm of even the IPCC's expectations. Not surprisingly, Dr. James Hansen is the author of most of them, and Al Gore concurs.
However, the central fact is that Hansen/Gore et al construct their apocalyptic prognostications on an element of climate change that has not been demonstrated in any recent periods of even higher temperatures. Apparently they believe - they can't know - the concept that the very limited ability of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures will trigger "positive forcings" - the release of vast quantities of methane from frozen tundra deposits - and those temperatures will then increase far beyond expectations.
Other equally eminent scientists have theorized, on the basis of past warming periods, that negative forcings will dampen, not accentuate, the warming trend. Considering that there is evidence for expecting negative forcing, and none for positive forcing, Mr. Lomborg's position is far more likely.
Recent headlines also add weight to this. The bright light shining on the Climate Research Unit e-mails and records liberated in the UK this week has disclosed that the top "hockey stick" scientists, Drs. Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and others, cherry picked (there's those words again) climate proxies to exaggerate current warming and to understate historical warming. In particular, proxies were used and abused to suppress or eliminate the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period of roughly 800-1300 AD.
The Medieval Warm Period cannot be allowed to stand if the current warming alarmists are to prevail, because the positive forcings their predictions require did not appear when natural climate change gave them the opportunity. In fact, one of the Warmists unknowingly confided to a warming skeptic that "we have to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period."
Unfortunately for the Warmists, the evidences of the Medieval Warming Period, and the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum which preceded it by 4,000 years, are abundant and irrefutable.
What really must be eliminated is the cherry picking the Warmists use to accuse skeptical scientists of cherry picking, and then their corruption of peer reviews to hide their ethical lapses.
Just the tip of their unethical activities was exposed this week, and much more is coming out as investigators pore over the e-mails.
"Tighten your seat belts."
Climategate - Man-Caused Global Warming is Dead!
I've had so much fun reading the hundreds of e-mails that were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, that I forgot that one of my duties as a global-warming skeptic is to help publicize evidence that the alarmists are lying, distorting, or fudging climate science.
A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.
Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.
How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.
A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.
Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.
How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Why Do Muslims Hate Us?
According to Liberals, Muslims don't hate us, we just don't understand them. What we have is a failure to communicate, and if we would just listen to Muslims everything would be wonderful.
I admit I don't understand Muslims. Their religion has never seemed peaceful and tolerant to me, and those seem like worthy expectations of religion.
Thinking about the prescription for peaceful relations with Muslims - improved communications - leads me to consider Muslim violence against other Muslims. Don't Sunnis and Shiites understand each other, live together, worship the same God, yet kill each other viciously and indiscriminately given the opportunity?
When Muslims kill Muslims - Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than all the Crusaders combined - what chance do we hated infidels have? Suppose you are a gay, or a feminist; will your views be tolerated in Saudi Arabia? Iran? Pakistan? Afghanistan? How about if you're a Christian or Jew? Or a Muslim who wants to be an atheist or convert?
The political correct say we are the problem, not the Islamists.
Such are the fruits of colossal ignorance and stupidity.
I admit I don't understand Muslims. Their religion has never seemed peaceful and tolerant to me, and those seem like worthy expectations of religion.
Thinking about the prescription for peaceful relations with Muslims - improved communications - leads me to consider Muslim violence against other Muslims. Don't Sunnis and Shiites understand each other, live together, worship the same God, yet kill each other viciously and indiscriminately given the opportunity?
When Muslims kill Muslims - Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than all the Crusaders combined - what chance do we hated infidels have? Suppose you are a gay, or a feminist; will your views be tolerated in Saudi Arabia? Iran? Pakistan? Afghanistan? How about if you're a Christian or Jew? Or a Muslim who wants to be an atheist or convert?
The political correct say we are the problem, not the Islamists.
Such are the fruits of colossal ignorance and stupidity.
Obama Gets Something Right
Obama finally gets something right. He has dithered on many things, the latest Afghanistan, and things have gotten worse.
But his dithering on climate change is the best thing he has done. A Spiegel Online article takes Obama to task for causing the failure of Copenhagen before it fails - Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change - and for that the world should be truly grateful.
Obama has saved the world from misguided leaders that who would fruitlessly destroy economic progress in the developing nations that will enable their people to adapt to natural climate change.
It's too bad that Obama is clueless about the good he is doing.
But his dithering on climate change is the best thing he has done. A Spiegel Online article takes Obama to task for causing the failure of Copenhagen before it fails - Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change - and for that the world should be truly grateful.
Obama has saved the world from misguided leaders that who would fruitlessly destroy economic progress in the developing nations that will enable their people to adapt to natural climate change.
It's too bad that Obama is clueless about the good he is doing.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Thomas Friedman Bombs Out on Global Warming
According to: Our Three Bombs, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published: October 6, 2009, The New York Times:
The misuse of “unprecedented” by anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts, such as the literate Thomas L. Friedman, the polemicist Al Gore, and many other college educated liberals is unprecedented. So much so that I consulted a dictionary to ascertain whether its meaning had changed, or whether there was a nuance that allowed its seeming perversion. There wasn’t. “Unprecedented” still means what I thought: without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled.
For the current level of carbon in the atmosphere to be unprecedented, it simply means that the current level was never before achieved – or surpassed. Five hundred million years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide was twenty times today’s level. Does that qualify as a previous instance? About 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, it was four to five times as high. Does that qualify as something known before or experienced?
Apparently what should alarm us is not the build up of carbon in the atmosphere, which is obviously not unprecedented, but that it will “tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event.” Perhaps as happened 10.000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, when average global temperatures were about 4ºC higher than today? Except nothing was tipped to melt the Siberian tundra and release all its methane, the Amazon didn’t dry up, and although all the sea ice at the North Pole melted in the summer, nothing catastrophic ensued.
All that happened is that human civilization prospered and thrived in the warmer, wetter environment. The same thing happened during subsequent warm periods following cold periods in cycles of hundreds of years up to the present. The Roman Warming was good for humanity; the following Dark Age wasn’t. Then about 1200 years ago the Medieval Warm Period began, and mankind again prospered for five hundred years until the Little Ice Age began about 1300 AD. Crops failed, famine stalked the land, glaciers advanced over farms and villages, mighty storms spread devastation, droughts (which are more frequent and last longer during cold periods) added to the misery, and disease and pestilence cut weakened populaces in half.
Happily, the Little Ice Ages ended and our Modern Warming began naturally, just as would be expected, given that similar cycles are not unprecedented.
As we continue to build up carbon in the atmosphere to unprecedented levels, we never know when the next emitted carbon molecule will tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event — like melting the Siberian tundra and releasing all of its methane, or drying up the Amazon or melting all the sea ice in the North Pole in summer. And when one ecosystem collapses, it can trigger npredictable changes in others that could alter our whole world.
The misuse of “unprecedented” by anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts, such as the literate Thomas L. Friedman, the polemicist Al Gore, and many other college educated liberals is unprecedented. So much so that I consulted a dictionary to ascertain whether its meaning had changed, or whether there was a nuance that allowed its seeming perversion. There wasn’t. “Unprecedented” still means what I thought: without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled.
For the current level of carbon in the atmosphere to be unprecedented, it simply means that the current level was never before achieved – or surpassed. Five hundred million years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide was twenty times today’s level. Does that qualify as a previous instance? About 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, it was four to five times as high. Does that qualify as something known before or experienced?
Apparently what should alarm us is not the build up of carbon in the atmosphere, which is obviously not unprecedented, but that it will “tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event.” Perhaps as happened 10.000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, when average global temperatures were about 4ºC higher than today? Except nothing was tipped to melt the Siberian tundra and release all its methane, the Amazon didn’t dry up, and although all the sea ice at the North Pole melted in the summer, nothing catastrophic ensued.
All that happened is that human civilization prospered and thrived in the warmer, wetter environment. The same thing happened during subsequent warm periods following cold periods in cycles of hundreds of years up to the present. The Roman Warming was good for humanity; the following Dark Age wasn’t. Then about 1200 years ago the Medieval Warm Period began, and mankind again prospered for five hundred years until the Little Ice Age began about 1300 AD. Crops failed, famine stalked the land, glaciers advanced over farms and villages, mighty storms spread devastation, droughts (which are more frequent and last longer during cold periods) added to the misery, and disease and pestilence cut weakened populaces in half.
Happily, the Little Ice Ages ended and our Modern Warming began naturally, just as would be expected, given that similar cycles are not unprecedented.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
San Francisco Tilts Towards Mass Hysteria
San Francisco may think it is on the cutting edge concerning urban wind farms (San Francisco tilts towards wind power, September 29, 2009), but the idea has long been tried and found wanting in Great Britain. The following critiques of urban wind power were all gleaned from the writings of wind power enthusiasts.
The first problem with urban wind turbines is the urban environment; buildings and other structures cause turbulence which reduces wind speed and causes it to swirl. The only rooftop wind turbines suited to a swirling wind are vertical axis (“eggbeater”) turbines, which are severely limited in size and are subject to frequent – and very expensive – gearbox failure.
Roof mounted wind turbines also are very noisy and produce heavy – and very annoying – vibrations. In an urban setting they may pay off on their investment in twenty years if they’re maintenance free, and none are. In urban settings small windmills usually don’t even pay back their carbon investment and are more likely to be net consumers of electricity than producers, since the inverter uses electricity when the turbine is not generating.
To operate efficiently, the larger the wind turbine the better, necessitating tall towers and long blades which are not appropriate in an urban setting. Manufacturers recommend that even small wind turbines be mounted on 80- to 120-foot towers to clear turbulence since nothing is generated until wind speed exceeds the cut-in rate of 7 to 10 mph. Such towers are unsuitable for installation on most rooftops.
San Francisco’s 44-member urban wind power task force producing a report recommending urban wind power is an illustration of how anthropogenic global warming inspires mass hysteria.
The first problem with urban wind turbines is the urban environment; buildings and other structures cause turbulence which reduces wind speed and causes it to swirl. The only rooftop wind turbines suited to a swirling wind are vertical axis (“eggbeater”) turbines, which are severely limited in size and are subject to frequent – and very expensive – gearbox failure.
Roof mounted wind turbines also are very noisy and produce heavy – and very annoying – vibrations. In an urban setting they may pay off on their investment in twenty years if they’re maintenance free, and none are. In urban settings small windmills usually don’t even pay back their carbon investment and are more likely to be net consumers of electricity than producers, since the inverter uses electricity when the turbine is not generating.
To operate efficiently, the larger the wind turbine the better, necessitating tall towers and long blades which are not appropriate in an urban setting. Manufacturers recommend that even small wind turbines be mounted on 80- to 120-foot towers to clear turbulence since nothing is generated until wind speed exceeds the cut-in rate of 7 to 10 mph. Such towers are unsuitable for installation on most rooftops.
San Francisco’s 44-member urban wind power task force producing a report recommending urban wind power is an illustration of how anthropogenic global warming inspires mass hysteria.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
I Hate White Guys' Health Care Plans
I must confess that I oppose all the health care reform plans that white guys have come up with for over forty years. It all started with LBJ, who gave us a plan which is not only already bankrupt, but which will bankrupt generations not yet born until it is mercifully euthanized. Then Jimmy Carter proposed a health care reform, but he had things so screwed up that America pulled the plug on him and turned the mess over to Ronald Reagan to clean up.
I have to thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for their attempt at health care reform. It was so awful than it brought us the Republican takeover in 1994, which lasted until the Republicans forgot why the American people voted for them to replace the feckless Democrats.
Al Gore had a plan, and John Kerry too, which the voters spared us from suffering.
Now another white guy has a plan, and I now know, thanks to the media, what motivates me to oppose it: racism.
That's right.
All along I thought I didn't like dumb Democrat health care plans, but thanks to the media I see the light.
It was racism all along.
LBJ, Jimmy, Bill and Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Obama - what's the common link?
That's right, they're white!
And I don't like their health care plans because I'm racist.
Of course!
I have to thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for their attempt at health care reform. It was so awful than it brought us the Republican takeover in 1994, which lasted until the Republicans forgot why the American people voted for them to replace the feckless Democrats.
Al Gore had a plan, and John Kerry too, which the voters spared us from suffering.
Now another white guy has a plan, and I now know, thanks to the media, what motivates me to oppose it: racism.
That's right.
All along I thought I didn't like dumb Democrat health care plans, but thanks to the media I see the light.
It was racism all along.
LBJ, Jimmy, Bill and Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Obama - what's the common link?
That's right, they're white!
And I don't like their health care plans because I'm racist.
Of course!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Jimmy Carter Continues Idiocy
Jimmy Carter continues to show us why he is considered the worst president of all. His comments about racist motivation are both stupid and irresponsible. And his comment about how it smacks of Nazism is particularly egregious, given that Democrats continually compared George Bush and Republicans to Nazis.
In fact, Democrats love to "Nazify" Republicans, as you will find if you click on this link which will take you to voluminous examples.
Bill Clinton may have earned the title of our first Black president when he started messing with Monica, but he was still lilly white when Hillarycare was shot down.
Jimmy Carter has been called many things over the years, but Black isn't one of them. Still, his health care reform was shot down on the basis of its lack of merit, just like Clinton's and Obama's.
Calling your opponents' disagreement with your policies racism is the last refuge of desperate scoundrels.
In fact, Democrats love to "Nazify" Republicans, as you will find if you click on this link which will take you to voluminous examples.
Bill Clinton may have earned the title of our first Black president when he started messing with Monica, but he was still lilly white when Hillarycare was shot down.
Jimmy Carter has been called many things over the years, but Black isn't one of them. Still, his health care reform was shot down on the basis of its lack of merit, just like Clinton's and Obama's.
Calling your opponents' disagreement with your policies racism is the last refuge of desperate scoundrels.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
House Hypocrites Threaten to Sanction Joe Wilson
The House Democrats threaten to sanction Joe Wilson for yelling "you lie" at Obama.
Hypocrites!
None were santioned when Democrats heckled President Bush during his 2005 State of the Union speech.
Liberal hypocrites!
Bill Clinton was not sanctioned for lying to Congress under oath when he said "I did not have sex with that woman."
Democrat hypocrites!
Please excuse the redundancies. When writing about Liberals and Democrats, the word "hypocrite" isn't necessary.
Hypocrites!
None were santioned when Democrats heckled President Bush during his 2005 State of the Union speech.
Liberal hypocrites!
Bill Clinton was not sanctioned for lying to Congress under oath when he said "I did not have sex with that woman."
Democrat hypocrites!
Please excuse the redundancies. When writing about Liberals and Democrats, the word "hypocrite" isn't necessary.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Obama School Speech - San Francisco Chronicle Displays Bias
According to the Chronicle, “(T)he frenzied reaction to the innocuous news that President Obama will address schoolchildren Tuesday suggests that the ever-louder fringe of the Republican Party has lost control of its senses.” (Senseless reaction to Obama’s school talk, Sept. 5, 2009) I wonder what the Chronicle’s position was in 1991 when President George H. W. Bush delivered a similar speech. The day after the speech, the Washington Post denounced it on its front page. The Congressional majority Democrats directed a General Accounting Office investigation, then held an extensive hearing. The National Education Association added a denunciation, even though Bush’s speech was as unremarkable as Obama’s. No doubt the Chronicle editorialized then that the entire Democrat Party had lost control of its senses.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
New York Times is Right - Obamacare
Once again I find myself agreeing with The New York Times.
That's scary!
Now The Times editorializes that the Democrats should pass Obamacare without any Republican votes.
I agree.
I can't think of a faster way for Democrats to commit political hari kari. The effect on the political futures of Blue Dog Democrats would be delightfully drastic. Election Day 2010 is just around the corner, and public support of Democrats is falling because of their attempts to socialize healthcare reform, not because of their inability to do so.
Medicare/Medicaid are bankrupt.
Obama wants Medicare/Medicaid for all.
"Everybody abandon the healthcare insurance that you like, and jump onto the USS (Universally Sinking Swiftly) Obamacare."
"And have faith in our Great Pilot."
Mao?
Kim Jong Il?
No, in Obama-messiah, following the wisdom of his Great Teacher, Saint Teddy of Chappaquiddick.
That's scary!
Now The Times editorializes that the Democrats should pass Obamacare without any Republican votes.
I agree.
I can't think of a faster way for Democrats to commit political hari kari. The effect on the political futures of Blue Dog Democrats would be delightfully drastic. Election Day 2010 is just around the corner, and public support of Democrats is falling because of their attempts to socialize healthcare reform, not because of their inability to do so.
Medicare/Medicaid are bankrupt.
Obama wants Medicare/Medicaid for all.
"Everybody abandon the healthcare insurance that you like, and jump onto the USS (Universally Sinking Swiftly) Obamacare."
"And have faith in our Great Pilot."
Mao?
Kim Jong Il?
No, in Obama-messiah, following the wisdom of his Great Teacher, Saint Teddy of Chappaquiddick.
How Do You Get Obama off the Time Cover?
I finally found something to thank Ted Kennedy for. He got Obama off the cover of Time!
Not just once, but by breaking the Obama chain, the following week Time put Jay Leno on its cover.
Of course, it won't last.
I think the Time/Obama cover watch will end next week, featuring Obama's infomercial to the students of America.
Essay topic for students: "How should we worship Obama? Let us count the ways."
Does anyone think that Obama will say anything to the students that the teachers' unions haven't fully vetted?
"Listen to your teachers, O boys and girls, and they surely will show you the way to Obama."
Not just once, but by breaking the Obama chain, the following week Time put Jay Leno on its cover.
Of course, it won't last.
I think the Time/Obama cover watch will end next week, featuring Obama's infomercial to the students of America.
Essay topic for students: "How should we worship Obama? Let us count the ways."
Does anyone think that Obama will say anything to the students that the teachers' unions haven't fully vetted?
"Listen to your teachers, O boys and girls, and they surely will show you the way to Obama."
Friday, September 04, 2009
History Dunce Joe Biden
Joe Biden was a poor student. He graduated near the bottom of his class. As the years rolled by, he didn't improve. He has been found to be a plagiarist and a liar.
The passage of time hasn't improved him, particularly in his knowledge of history. That doesn't stop him from making wildly inaccurate statements. He's too dumb to realize that the age of the Internet has made fact checking very easy.
Biden's latest false remark was that Social Security, created in the 1930s, and Medicare, passed in the 1960s, lacked much initial Republican support.
I wish they did, but they didn't. As reported in The Hill:
Biden and the Democrats get failing grades in history, but straight "A's" in lying about it.
The passage of time hasn't improved him, particularly in his knowledge of history. That doesn't stop him from making wildly inaccurate statements. He's too dumb to realize that the age of the Internet has made fact checking very easy.
Biden's latest false remark was that Social Security, created in the 1930s, and Medicare, passed in the 1960s, lacked much initial Republican support.
I wish they did, but they didn't. As reported in The Hill:
But the Social Security Act, passed in 1935 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, passed 372-33 in the House. Some 81 House Republicans crossed the aisle to back the bill. Just 15 Republicans opposed it. In the Senate, the legislation passed 77-6, with 16 Republicans supporting it and five Republicans voting against it.This reminds me of Democrat mythology about Republicans opposing Civil Rights legislation. In truth, higher percentages of Republicans voted to pass Civil Rights legislation than the Democrats. History-challenged Democrats like Biden somehow overlook that the opposition to passing Civil Rights came from Southern Democrats - the "Dixiecrats" - such as Al Gore, Senior, and their long-serving and revered former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Byrd.
The bill creating Medicare, a cornerstone of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, passed in 1965 with similar GOP backing. In the House, the bill passed 307-116, with 70 Republicans supporting it. The bill passed 70-24 in the Senate, with 13 of the 32 Republicans voting for it.
Biden and the Democrats get failing grades in history, but straight "A's" in lying about it.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Ted Kenndy Died to Save Our Healthcare
Teddy died for us - for our healthcare - and Mary Jo Kopechne can finally tell him how proud she is of her part in making it all come true.
Healthcare Apostle Harry Reid brings us the gospel according to Obama.
Hallelujah!
Healthcare Apostle Harry Reid brings us the gospel according to Obama.
Hallelujah!
Friday, August 28, 2009
Democrats for Public Healthcare Oppose School Choice
Democrats for government healthcare – the public option – oppose school choice.
Our publicly funded education option is not working well. A realistic assessment of it would declare it a failure. Evidence of failure is objective and unequivocal: over half our high school graduates require remedial courses in math and English when they go on to college. And the percentage of graduates without satisfactory math and English skills that don’t go to college is probably in the range of eighty to ninety percent.
Taxpayers are given bitter choices to educate their children. They can send them to public schools, accepting inadequate education outcomes. They can move into expensive housing areas which have high-performing public schools. Or they can scrape and save to send their children to private schools. No matter the choice, the taxpayer funded education monopoly produces an unsatisfactory product.
The Liberals who preach that a government funded healthcare system will drive down costs through competition want nothing to do with competition from private schools. The Liberals say such competition would take money out of the public schools system, making even worse. Yet our public education costs are very high, and unlike our expensive private healthcare system, our public education system is failing us at the worse time, when education weaknesses threaten our global competitiveness.
At least our healthcare system is the most responsive to patient need in the world – as measured by the World Health Organization – and produces bestter outcomes for treating serious health problems.
Our education system is among the worst.
The former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, once said that capitalists would sell the Soviets the rope to hang us.
That’s not true. We’re hanging ourselves.
Our publicly funded education option is not working well. A realistic assessment of it would declare it a failure. Evidence of failure is objective and unequivocal: over half our high school graduates require remedial courses in math and English when they go on to college. And the percentage of graduates without satisfactory math and English skills that don’t go to college is probably in the range of eighty to ninety percent.
Taxpayers are given bitter choices to educate their children. They can send them to public schools, accepting inadequate education outcomes. They can move into expensive housing areas which have high-performing public schools. Or they can scrape and save to send their children to private schools. No matter the choice, the taxpayer funded education monopoly produces an unsatisfactory product.
The Liberals who preach that a government funded healthcare system will drive down costs through competition want nothing to do with competition from private schools. The Liberals say such competition would take money out of the public schools system, making even worse. Yet our public education costs are very high, and unlike our expensive private healthcare system, our public education system is failing us at the worse time, when education weaknesses threaten our global competitiveness.
At least our healthcare system is the most responsive to patient need in the world – as measured by the World Health Organization – and produces bestter outcomes for treating serious health problems.
Our education system is among the worst.
The former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, once said that capitalists would sell the Soviets the rope to hang us.
That’s not true. We’re hanging ourselves.
Easy Way to Make a Small Fortune
How do you make a small fortune?
Invest a large one in biofuels.
Biofuels only make sense marginally because of large government subsidies and mandated use. At best they only make a small dent in demand. If all the vegetable oil and animal fats were thrown into biofuel production, it would satisfy less than ten percent of demand. At worst biofuels drive up the cost of food and fertilizers, increase water scarcity, and cause huge tracts of forests and marginal farm lands to be put into crop production.
Although they studiously ignore biofuels enormous negatives, all the problems created by biofuel production – scarcity and rising food costs, wasting water, vast additions of CO2 to the atmosphere from clearing land – are the things that environmentalists have pledged to prevent.
“They have met the enemy, and it is them.”
The Achilles heel of biofuels won’t go away. Whenever the subsidies end, or the price of oil reflects its abundant global supply versus sluggish demand growth, biofuels are a horrible investment. Biofuels are not like oil. Oil is already there. You find it, extract it, process it, and use in a mature infrastructure. Oil production is not labor intensive.
Biofuels don’t exist until they are planted, grown, and harvested, all at great expense and consumption of resources – labor, water, land, fuel – and then are processed in enormous physical plants. When oil prices are at their normal levels, all biofuel production is uneconomical: each gallon is produced at a loss. If taxpayers absorb that loss, the plant stays in production. If not, its investors get their just desserts.
Fools and their monies are soon parted.
Invest a large one in biofuels.
Biofuels only make sense marginally because of large government subsidies and mandated use. At best they only make a small dent in demand. If all the vegetable oil and animal fats were thrown into biofuel production, it would satisfy less than ten percent of demand. At worst biofuels drive up the cost of food and fertilizers, increase water scarcity, and cause huge tracts of forests and marginal farm lands to be put into crop production.
Although they studiously ignore biofuels enormous negatives, all the problems created by biofuel production – scarcity and rising food costs, wasting water, vast additions of CO2 to the atmosphere from clearing land – are the things that environmentalists have pledged to prevent.
“They have met the enemy, and it is them.”
The Achilles heel of biofuels won’t go away. Whenever the subsidies end, or the price of oil reflects its abundant global supply versus sluggish demand growth, biofuels are a horrible investment. Biofuels are not like oil. Oil is already there. You find it, extract it, process it, and use in a mature infrastructure. Oil production is not labor intensive.
Biofuels don’t exist until they are planted, grown, and harvested, all at great expense and consumption of resources – labor, water, land, fuel – and then are processed in enormous physical plants. When oil prices are at their normal levels, all biofuel production is uneconomical: each gallon is produced at a loss. If taxpayers absorb that loss, the plant stays in production. If not, its investors get their just desserts.
Fools and their monies are soon parted.
Obama’s Healthcare Adviser Was Right! Obama’s Plan is Worthless!
I rarely agree with anything a liberal Democrat says, but sometimes they hit the nail right on the head. So it is with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, brother of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving.
Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."
Dr. Emanuel just described the Democrat healthcare reform plan.
In other words, the Obama plan for financing healthcare reform is worthless, from the mouth of one of his closest advisers.
And this was all known over a year ago.
More recently, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod emailed that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.
So who's right? Obama says one thing, his advisers say another. And then Obama tells the American public that his changes won't make anyone give up their current healthcare.
Tell that to the millions in Medicare Advantage. There is no way their current coverage can be continued if Obama makes the cuts in Medicare Advantage he proposes.
If he listens to his advisers, he knows that. He's either as dumb as Ted Kennedy, or as dishonest. Either way America loses.
Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."
Dr. Emanuel just described the Democrat healthcare reform plan.
In other words, the Obama plan for financing healthcare reform is worthless, from the mouth of one of his closest advisers.
And this was all known over a year ago.
More recently, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod emailed that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.
So who's right? Obama says one thing, his advisers say another. And then Obama tells the American public that his changes won't make anyone give up their current healthcare.
Tell that to the millions in Medicare Advantage. There is no way their current coverage can be continued if Obama makes the cuts in Medicare Advantage he proposes.
If he listens to his advisers, he knows that. He's either as dumb as Ted Kennedy, or as dishonest. Either way America loses.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
How to Lose Friends and Energize Enemies – “Blue Dog” Democrats are brain dead
Representative Pete Stark, Dem.-California, who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told reporters on a conference call that Moderate Blue Dog Democrats "just want to cause trouble. They're for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process."
Thanks, Pete.
It’s wonderful to hear such words from a Democrat speaking about other Democrats. It goes with out saying that you think the voters who elected the Blue Dog Democrats are brain dead too.
Pete, whatever you do, please don’t stop talking.
Thanks, Pete.
It’s wonderful to hear such words from a Democrat speaking about other Democrats. It goes with out saying that you think the voters who elected the Blue Dog Democrats are brain dead too.
Pete, whatever you do, please don’t stop talking.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
If It Doesn't Work, Do More!
A writer to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, once decried a “bunch of hypocrites” who “collect big government pensions including government health care” and “would be the last to voluntarily give up their Medicare!” Since I’ve collected military retired pay since retiring in 1984, and military health care since enlisting in 1962 – Medicare since 2007 – my ears were burning.
It’s nice to finally be envied for the fruits of military service. Few envied me while I served, 1962 to 1984. In over 21 years the Air Force gave me thirteen permanent assignments, and only once was I stationed at a base where I could afford to buy a house. For eight years the Air Force told me my next assignment was Viet Nam – then sent me somewhere else each time. If things get really nasty I can still be involuntarily recalled to active duty - I placed myself on a voluntary recall roster for Gulf War I, but the Air Force didn't need me then.
I’ve drawn Social Security for just over a decade, after paying into it since 1960, and Alice and I pay income taxes on 85% of what we receive. I used to propose that Social Security return my contributions, and in exchange I would foreswear its benefits. Social Security ignored my generous offer.
Concerning the writer’s assumption about giving up Medicare, Alice and I were financially better off before the government forced us to take Medicare. Medicare costs us $8,564 more per year for less coverage than my military health care provided. Importantly for Alice and me, Medicare does not cover us on our frequent travels overseas, and according to the news, local Medicare patients have been severely impacted by government grant reductions.
Our taxation system, because it is dependent on taxing the wealthy (the top 20% of tax filers pay over 90% of personal income taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3%), implodes with every downturn. Our government’s solution is to tax the wealthy more. “If what you do doesn’t work, do more of it!”
It’s nice to finally be envied for the fruits of military service. Few envied me while I served, 1962 to 1984. In over 21 years the Air Force gave me thirteen permanent assignments, and only once was I stationed at a base where I could afford to buy a house. For eight years the Air Force told me my next assignment was Viet Nam – then sent me somewhere else each time. If things get really nasty I can still be involuntarily recalled to active duty - I placed myself on a voluntary recall roster for Gulf War I, but the Air Force didn't need me then.
I’ve drawn Social Security for just over a decade, after paying into it since 1960, and Alice and I pay income taxes on 85% of what we receive. I used to propose that Social Security return my contributions, and in exchange I would foreswear its benefits. Social Security ignored my generous offer.
Concerning the writer’s assumption about giving up Medicare, Alice and I were financially better off before the government forced us to take Medicare. Medicare costs us $8,564 more per year for less coverage than my military health care provided. Importantly for Alice and me, Medicare does not cover us on our frequent travels overseas, and according to the news, local Medicare patients have been severely impacted by government grant reductions.
Our taxation system, because it is dependent on taxing the wealthy (the top 20% of tax filers pay over 90% of personal income taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3%), implodes with every downturn. Our government’s solution is to tax the wealthy more. “If what you do doesn’t work, do more of it!”
Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
I was saddened today to hear of the death of Ted Kennedy. He lived his life as a self-indulgent frat boy, cowardly let Mary Jo Kopechne die while he worried about his political future, was a drunken philanderer, and was a poster boy for all things wrong with Democrat politics. His usefulness to Republicans was enormous - he was a living, breathing illustration of all we opposed.
Now in death the Democrats are trying to get a health-care bill passed that had no hope while Teddy was alive. As is always the case with Democrats, the facts didn't change, but emotions rule. However, here are the facts.
What they don’t have to pay for, people always want in abundance. Lost in the universal healthcare discussion is that our existing public options, Medicare and Medicaid, are already bankrupt (And Social Security is operating in the red). Not only bankrupt, but without drastic changes their unfunded liabilities (equal to the World’s GDP) will bankrupt future generations of Americans.
Over 70 percent of Americans like their health insurance, and with good reasons. The World Health Organization rates our health system the most responsive to medical needs in the world. Compared by outcomes, we have the highest survival rates for cancers and other life threatening illnesses. That’s the essence of what you want in a healthcare system: fast, effective service. Although the Canadian system is the darling of our Left, Cleveland, Ohio is known as the “hip replacement center of Canada.”
Unlike Democrats, Republicans have sound ideas for gaining Universal Healthcare. First, end the tax subsidy for employer provided healthcare, then give tax credits (vouchers for the poor) for purchasing health insurance. Health insurance then would be available and portable – you could change jobs without losing it.
Important Republican health insurance reforms are fought by Democrats, since Democrats are owned by the trial lawyers and the teacher and public employees unions. Republicans would dump the lawyers and let medical experts examine damage claims and award compensation. Malpractice insurance adds enormous costs and invites lawsuits, but even worse, threats of lawsuits make doctors examine and prescribe defensively and wastes billion of dollars.
Besides trial lawyers, unions are the other special interest group Democrats pander to, and they will fight to hang on to an accident of World War II, tax-subsidized health insurance, that never should have been allowed in the first place.
Democrats want special interests out of healthcare unless they contribute to Democrats.
Now in death the Democrats are trying to get a health-care bill passed that had no hope while Teddy was alive. As is always the case with Democrats, the facts didn't change, but emotions rule. However, here are the facts.
What they don’t have to pay for, people always want in abundance. Lost in the universal healthcare discussion is that our existing public options, Medicare and Medicaid, are already bankrupt (And Social Security is operating in the red). Not only bankrupt, but without drastic changes their unfunded liabilities (equal to the World’s GDP) will bankrupt future generations of Americans.
Over 70 percent of Americans like their health insurance, and with good reasons. The World Health Organization rates our health system the most responsive to medical needs in the world. Compared by outcomes, we have the highest survival rates for cancers and other life threatening illnesses. That’s the essence of what you want in a healthcare system: fast, effective service. Although the Canadian system is the darling of our Left, Cleveland, Ohio is known as the “hip replacement center of Canada.”
Unlike Democrats, Republicans have sound ideas for gaining Universal Healthcare. First, end the tax subsidy for employer provided healthcare, then give tax credits (vouchers for the poor) for purchasing health insurance. Health insurance then would be available and portable – you could change jobs without losing it.
Important Republican health insurance reforms are fought by Democrats, since Democrats are owned by the trial lawyers and the teacher and public employees unions. Republicans would dump the lawyers and let medical experts examine damage claims and award compensation. Malpractice insurance adds enormous costs and invites lawsuits, but even worse, threats of lawsuits make doctors examine and prescribe defensively and wastes billion of dollars.
Besides trial lawyers, unions are the other special interest group Democrats pander to, and they will fight to hang on to an accident of World War II, tax-subsidized health insurance, that never should have been allowed in the first place.
Democrats want special interests out of healthcare unless they contribute to Democrats.
Democrats Plan to Tax and Spend us to Prosperity
Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat, represents one of the most liberal districts in California. Her district includes storied Marin County, just accross the Golden Gate from San Francisco, but oddly stretches in its gerrymandering way up to include The Sea Ranch on the far northern tip of Sonoma County. How or why she picked The Sea Ranch to do a town-hall meeting is a real conundrum. It is sparsly populated - only a couple of hundred full-time residents - and far from the main-stream news media. In fact, our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, appears to have provided the only news coverage.
Several friends and neighbors asked me - begged me - to attend and ask Ms. Woolsey questions. Unfortunately, I was the parking czar for our annual Art in the Redwoods and had committed myself to running the parking the same afternoon as Ms. Woolsey's visit.
So I read the report of her visit, then sent the Independent Coast Observer editor the following commentary and questions I would have presented had I been able to attend:
Edidtor
I’m sorry I missed Lynn Woolsey’s love fest at The Sea Ranch and her message to everyone that they have rights to unlimited health care and to have someone else pay for it. Of course I had several questions I wanted to ask. The first and most important: “Ms. Woolsey, since Medicare and Medicaid are already bankrupt failures, why do you want everyone in them?”
Then, “Thank you for avoiding the question, Ms. Woolsey. You know Mr. Obama says he will fund universal health care by eliminating the thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid costs that are due to fraud, waste, and abuse. Despite the fact that all politicians say they will do that, it never gets done – it just gets worse. Why isn’t Mr. Obama already eliminating the fraud, waste, and abuse to demonstrate that he can do it?”
“Thanks for ducking that question too. Ms. Woolsey, you, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Obama, and other Democrat leaders say that opposition to health care reform is an “Astroturf” rather than “grass-roots” movement. However, John Sweeney, president of the National AFL-CIO, said that 250,000 union workers nationwide are being trained to advocate for health care reform. Is 250,000 paid and trained union thugs your idea of a Democrat grass-roots movement?”
“Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Obama now admits the deficit will be two trillion dollars larger in the next ten years than his previous estimate - nine trillion instead of seven trillion dollars - an almost thirty percent increase. With Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid now running deficits, tax revenues decreasing steadily, and China and other lenders worried about our falling credit worthiness, what sense is there in spending us into a deeper hole?”
“Ms. Woolsey, thank you and Democrats for demonstrating total lack of knowledge of economics.”
Several friends and neighbors asked me - begged me - to attend and ask Ms. Woolsey questions. Unfortunately, I was the parking czar for our annual Art in the Redwoods and had committed myself to running the parking the same afternoon as Ms. Woolsey's visit.
So I read the report of her visit, then sent the Independent Coast Observer editor the following commentary and questions I would have presented had I been able to attend:
Edidtor
I’m sorry I missed Lynn Woolsey’s love fest at The Sea Ranch and her message to everyone that they have rights to unlimited health care and to have someone else pay for it. Of course I had several questions I wanted to ask. The first and most important: “Ms. Woolsey, since Medicare and Medicaid are already bankrupt failures, why do you want everyone in them?”
Then, “Thank you for avoiding the question, Ms. Woolsey. You know Mr. Obama says he will fund universal health care by eliminating the thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid costs that are due to fraud, waste, and abuse. Despite the fact that all politicians say they will do that, it never gets done – it just gets worse. Why isn’t Mr. Obama already eliminating the fraud, waste, and abuse to demonstrate that he can do it?”
“Thanks for ducking that question too. Ms. Woolsey, you, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Obama, and other Democrat leaders say that opposition to health care reform is an “Astroturf” rather than “grass-roots” movement. However, John Sweeney, president of the National AFL-CIO, said that 250,000 union workers nationwide are being trained to advocate for health care reform. Is 250,000 paid and trained union thugs your idea of a Democrat grass-roots movement?”
“Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Obama now admits the deficit will be two trillion dollars larger in the next ten years than his previous estimate - nine trillion instead of seven trillion dollars - an almost thirty percent increase. With Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid now running deficits, tax revenues decreasing steadily, and China and other lenders worried about our falling credit worthiness, what sense is there in spending us into a deeper hole?”
“Ms. Woolsey, thank you and Democrats for demonstrating total lack of knowledge of economics.”
Friday, August 07, 2009
Democrats Love to Nazify Republicans
Apparently Nancy Pelosi saw a Republican demonstrator with a sign that had a Swastika overwritten with a red “No.” I would have interpreted the sign as meaning “no national socialist healthcare!” or something of that ilk, but it was definitely against, not an endorsement of, socialism.
(For those who are abysmally ignorant of history, also known as “Democrats” for short, Nazi is short for National Socialist, and no clear-headed thinker has ever concluded that Republicans are socialists. Or that the party of freedom, responsibility, and individualism would ever put itself in the hands of a power-mad demagogue. Republicans leave all those sorts of things to Democrats.)
Democrats use of Nazi imagery also reared its ugly head in Washington state, where Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver said of anti-government healthcare demonstrators, "What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics."
Perhaps Congressman Baird was confused about which were the Republicans and which the Democrats in a video of union thugs forcing demonstrators from a Democrat Townhall meeting in Tampa.
I had hoped that the Democrats would stop smearing Nazi imagery on Republicans after President Bush (“Bush-Hitler”) completed his presidency, but Democrats are still falling back on it at any sign of opposition. (Here’s a very large gallery of Democrats invoking Nazi imagery about President Bush)
Democrats are enormous hypocrites. They're whining about a poster of Obama as The Joker, but no one was upset when Vanity Fair ran a picture of President Bush as The Joker.
Democrat hypocrites are a coalition of special interest groups, and for many years for almost any occasion they have made very vocal appearances carrying mass produced signs – their unions in particular perform as “Rent a Mob” agencies.
Alice and I went to a Republican rally in Walnut Creek circa 1996 featuring Speaker Of The House Newt Gingrich. As we approached the venue, the Lesher Center for the Arts, well supplied union-employed demonstrators and activists for other causes were waving their professionally printed signs and chanting in unison. Alice and I were early, so we went among the demonstrators and started arguing with them and disrupting their chants by being more energetic and animated than they. At one point we were interviewed and photographed by a crew from Time Magazine, and also by reporters for the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers. The demonstrators were visibly upset that the two of us were getting all the attention of the news crews.
We discovered our notoriety when the phone rudely awoke us as we slept in the next day, Sunday morning. Alice answered and after verifying that she was Alice Combs, the caller said:”You’re not nice people,” and hung up. A moment later the phone rang again, only this time it was a Livermore friend asking if we had seen the Sunday Tri-Valley Herald: “Your pictures are on the front page!”
News about the Pope probably bumped us from Time, but pictures of us made the front pages of the Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, and Contra Costa Times the following day.
(For those who are abysmally ignorant of history, also known as “Democrats” for short, Nazi is short for National Socialist, and no clear-headed thinker has ever concluded that Republicans are socialists. Or that the party of freedom, responsibility, and individualism would ever put itself in the hands of a power-mad demagogue. Republicans leave all those sorts of things to Democrats.)
Democrats use of Nazi imagery also reared its ugly head in Washington state, where Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver said of anti-government healthcare demonstrators, "What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics."
Perhaps Congressman Baird was confused about which were the Republicans and which the Democrats in a video of union thugs forcing demonstrators from a Democrat Townhall meeting in Tampa.
I had hoped that the Democrats would stop smearing Nazi imagery on Republicans after President Bush (“Bush-Hitler”) completed his presidency, but Democrats are still falling back on it at any sign of opposition. (Here’s a very large gallery of Democrats invoking Nazi imagery about President Bush)
Democrats are enormous hypocrites. They're whining about a poster of Obama as The Joker, but no one was upset when Vanity Fair ran a picture of President Bush as The Joker.
Democrat hypocrites are a coalition of special interest groups, and for many years for almost any occasion they have made very vocal appearances carrying mass produced signs – their unions in particular perform as “Rent a Mob” agencies.
Alice and I went to a Republican rally in Walnut Creek circa 1996 featuring Speaker Of The House Newt Gingrich. As we approached the venue, the Lesher Center for the Arts, well supplied union-employed demonstrators and activists for other causes were waving their professionally printed signs and chanting in unison. Alice and I were early, so we went among the demonstrators and started arguing with them and disrupting their chants by being more energetic and animated than they. At one point we were interviewed and photographed by a crew from Time Magazine, and also by reporters for the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers. The demonstrators were visibly upset that the two of us were getting all the attention of the news crews.
We discovered our notoriety when the phone rudely awoke us as we slept in the next day, Sunday morning. Alice answered and after verifying that she was Alice Combs, the caller said:”You’re not nice people,” and hung up. A moment later the phone rang again, only this time it was a Livermore friend asking if we had seen the Sunday Tri-Valley Herald: “Your pictures are on the front page!”
News about the Pope probably bumped us from Time, but pictures of us made the front pages of the Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, and Contra Costa Times the following day.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Democrat Politicians Learn Fast
Democrat politicians learn some things fast, anyway.
They’re clueless about healthcare, global warming, or spending within their means. But a couple of raucous town hall meetings have sent them whining for the phones. The “Tele-Townhall” is now their townhall of choice because it gives them total control over their audiences.
There won’t be any more mocking in Arkansas, flaring tempers in South Florida, disruptions in Connecticut, pandemonium in Pennsylvania, or Pelosi accusing protestors of “carrying Swastikas.”
Barbara Boxer complains right-wing protestors are "too-well dressed." (See the video here)
Obama wants supporters to snitch on opponents of Obamacare by emailing "fishy" emails and "evil blog posts" to flag@whitehouse.gov . I immediately got with the program and emailed each and all of my posts on healthcare last night. I invite you to click on my "healthcare" label at the bottom of this post and do the same.
Democrats decided to "demonstrate" back, except after they organized the event and directed how attendees should look - carry signs to demonstrate their support - they forgot that their featured Senator couldn't be there. But they think they can run healthcare?
When Democrat Rep. Doggett was "dogged" at a town hall in Texas, he said "don’t give up or give in to them," just before the Democrats gave up on in-person townhalls.
Last night I found a call recorded on our answering machine from Mike Thompson, Democrat, Representative for my northern California congressional district, to join in a “live” townhall via telephone. Mike caught on quick. That’s the last we’ll see of him.
Thompson is doing the same thing a Democrat does in Washington to control the "communication."
He doesn’t need us for much anyway. He gets more than enough campaign contributions from just two deep feeders at the public trough, the teachers and public employees unions.
Now all he will hear from us is what he wants to hear.
They’re clueless about healthcare, global warming, or spending within their means. But a couple of raucous town hall meetings have sent them whining for the phones. The “Tele-Townhall” is now their townhall of choice because it gives them total control over their audiences.
There won’t be any more mocking in Arkansas, flaring tempers in South Florida, disruptions in Connecticut, pandemonium in Pennsylvania, or Pelosi accusing protestors of “carrying Swastikas.”
Barbara Boxer complains right-wing protestors are "too-well dressed." (See the video here)
Obama wants supporters to snitch on opponents of Obamacare by emailing "fishy" emails and "evil blog posts" to flag@whitehouse.gov . I immediately got with the program and emailed each and all of my posts on healthcare last night. I invite you to click on my "healthcare" label at the bottom of this post and do the same.
Democrats decided to "demonstrate" back, except after they organized the event and directed how attendees should look - carry signs to demonstrate their support - they forgot that their featured Senator couldn't be there. But they think they can run healthcare?
When Democrat Rep. Doggett was "dogged" at a town hall in Texas, he said "don’t give up or give in to them," just before the Democrats gave up on in-person townhalls.
Last night I found a call recorded on our answering machine from Mike Thompson, Democrat, Representative for my northern California congressional district, to join in a “live” townhall via telephone. Mike caught on quick. That’s the last we’ll see of him.
Thompson is doing the same thing a Democrat does in Washington to control the "communication."
He doesn’t need us for much anyway. He gets more than enough campaign contributions from just two deep feeders at the public trough, the teachers and public employees unions.
Now all he will hear from us is what he wants to hear.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
"Birthers" vs. "Truthers" and "TANGers"
Liberals are enjoying ridiculing Republicans who have doubts that Barack Obama is a natural born American. I don't share those doubts, but I was interested in the proof the Left says is conclusive, for a reason I will disclose a bit later in this post.
In the case of the Los Angeles Times (click here for the article), the proof is obvious: Obama's birth certificate.
In the case of the Los Angeles Times (click here for the article), the proof is obvious: Obama's birth certificate.
I admit when I saw Obama's "birth certificate" I was underwhelmed, since it is a modern bare-bones form without any of the things I hoped to see: attending physician, hospital, certificate number, certifying signature and stamp, &etc. In other words it looks exactly like a modern form that anyone could have filled out on a laser printer. With the Certificate No. redacted (the form notes that "ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE") it really does not prove anything, and I can understand why the dubious would want more.
A radio host on NPR said that Liberals have proven that Obama was not born in America. According to the host, Liberals say you can't believe anything Ann Coulter says, and Ann says Obama was America-born.
It's not like Conservatives have a monopoly on conspiracy theories, since in number and fantasy the Left is far ahead. The "Truthers" inhabit a realm to which only the truly delusional can go. Since anyone who doesn't agree with them is part of the conspiracy, in their point of view there is no valid rebuttal to their beliefs - sorry, I mean their "facts." But just for the curious, here's one of many excellent debunkers (click here) of the "9/11 Truthers." All part of the conspiracy, don't you know.
The "TANGers" claim to fame is that their leader, Dan Rather, still believes his Texas Air National Guard letters were legitimate.
Before that was the "October Surprise." when soon to be Vice-President George H. W. Bush was flown to Paris in an F-111 supersonic Air Force fighter bomber, arranged to not have the hostages held by Iran released before the Reagan/Carter election, and was whisked back to Washington.
Many people, including some of my best friends, continue to say that Bill Clinton didn't lie when he said that he "never had sex with that woman." Oral sex, you see, is not sex.
Even though it's called sex.
I wish my friends realized that their defense of Clinton's lies eliminates a big part of the sex lives of gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, transgenders, and even adventurous heterosexuals. It cuts sex in San Francisco by more than half.
Then there are Lefties who avere that Moncia Lowinsky was part of a Republican plot. That would be a dream come true for me - Republican leaders as devious as Democrats. Think of the brilliance and planning it would take to recruit a young Jewish Democrat capable of crossing the nation, procuring an internship, catching the eye of the President, and getting him to drop his pants in the White House and decorate a blue dress.
Hillary believed Bill "didn't have sex with that woman" and blamed it all on a vast right-wing conspiracy.
For ever looney right-wing conspiracy theory the Left has ten even loonier.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
OBAMA: JOE BIDEN IS AN ASSet
Obama said: "Joe Biden is an Asset"
"Folksy" Joe Biden is an asset, but to whom? Certainly at this time, when Republicans are taking the momentum off the Democrat's mad rush towards socialized heathcare and economically ruinous "tax charade" environmental protection, Biden's comments are a welcome distraction causing Democrats to lose their focus and to expose their lack of credibility.
In terms of credibility, how credible is the Obama Administration when it rushes to declare "Joe Biden is an asset" as once more his remarks cause them to make embarrassing denials and explanations?
Folksy Joe already said Democrats didn't understand how bad the economy was, and that even if they did everything right they had as equal a chance of failure as success.
Actually, this was one of the few times Folksy Joe got it right.
For a small compilation of Folksy Joe's dumb remarks, click on the "Joe Biden Dumb Remarks" label below (and find out why I nicknamed him "Folksy Joe")
Several months ago I posted this comment in reply to a comment from a Biden supporter. I enjoyed rereading it so much, that just had to add it to this latest:
"Folksy" Joe Biden is an asset, but to whom? Certainly at this time, when Republicans are taking the momentum off the Democrat's mad rush towards socialized heathcare and economically ruinous "tax charade" environmental protection, Biden's comments are a welcome distraction causing Democrats to lose their focus and to expose their lack of credibility.
In terms of credibility, how credible is the Obama Administration when it rushes to declare "Joe Biden is an asset" as once more his remarks cause them to make embarrassing denials and explanations?
Folksy Joe already said Democrats didn't understand how bad the economy was, and that even if they did everything right they had as equal a chance of failure as success.
Actually, this was one of the few times Folksy Joe got it right.
For a small compilation of Folksy Joe's dumb remarks, click on the "Joe Biden Dumb Remarks" label below (and find out why I nicknamed him "Folksy Joe")
Several months ago I posted this comment in reply to a comment from a Biden supporter. I enjoyed rereading it so much, that just had to add it to this latest:
The Main Stream Media overlooked one of Biden’s many “Dan Quayle” moments, when Biden didn’t know that his Democrat saint, FDR, was not president when the stock market crashed in 1929, and that television was still over a decade away.
What do you think? Isn’t Biden’s comment dumber than Dan Quayle not knowing that, unlike the plural “potatoes,” the singular has no silent “e”?
Democrats called Dick Cheney a "Chicken Hawk" because of five student deferments that kept him from being drafted. I wonder what Joe Biden will be called? He also had five student deferments, then was classified 1-Y (undraftable except in a national emergency) because of childhood asthma.
In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.
Isn't this the same Joe Biden who is so proud of his vitality?
With the political and military acumen that typifies Democrats, Joe Biden pronounced the “surge” a failure just as it was proving just the opposite. Joe Biden on the surge: "The surge isn't going to work either tactically or strategically,” Biden told the Boston Globe last summer. “Tactically it isn't going to work because ... our guys go in and secure a neighborhood, but because we don't have enough troops, we have to turn it over to the Iraqis, and they can't hold it or won't hold it."
More Democrat wishful thinking? They wanted the surge to fail in the worst way.
When asked by George Stephanopoulos if he had said “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training,” concerning whether Obama was ready to be President, Joe Biden said one of the few things he has gotten right: "I think I stand by that statement."
I’ll bet he won’t stand by it today.
That was one of the few signs Joe Biden has shown of having any sense. While he was dumb enough to get caught for plagiarism, he was doubly dumb by plagiarizing an ineffective British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. For those who protest that Biden’s plagiarism was accidental, we have voluminous evidence that Biden is a stranger to truth from his undergraduate days: "Within days, it was also discovered that as a first-year law student at Syracuse Law School, Biden had plagiarized a law review article in a class paper he wrote. Though the dean of the law school in 1988 as well as Biden's former professor played down the incident of plagiarism, they did find that Biden drew 'chunks of heavy legal prose directly from' the article in question. Biden said the act was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.
Biden also released his undergraduate grades, which started off poorly and remained unexceptional. Further, when questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school Biden had claimed falsely to have graduated in the 'top half' of his class, (when he actually graduated 76th in a class of 85), that he had attended on a full scholarship, and had received three degrees. In fact he had received two majors, History and Political Science, and a single B.A., as well as a half scholarship based on financial need.
Note to Obama: Silence is Golden
The New York Times that wouldn’t let the Bush Administration keep classified information secret, now wants to give cover to an Obama Administration that can’t keep its mouths shut.
It starts at the top, of course. Obama put his foot in it when he stupidly said the Cambridge, Massachusetts cops “stupidly” arrested Gates. He not only put his foot in it, he then shot himself in the foot because he let all the air out he was trying to pump into creating socialized healthcare.
Just when he had everyone’s attention focused on healthcare, he made himself his own distraction.
Now a video just surfaced via the Drudge Report of Obama complaining to Randi Rhodes on “Air America” that the Bush Administration rushed legislation through before anyone had a chance to even read it, let alone debate it.
Talk about the “pot calling the kettle black.”
This cliché means that Obama is a hypocrite, and has nothing to do with race, quite unlike Obama’s remark about the Cambridge police officer.
The number one loose tongue, however, is and remains “Folksy” Joe Biden. Who can forget his “The government has to spend to keep from going bankrupt”? Liberal pundits were quick to come to his defense: “You know, it sounds funny, but the Vice President is right.”
Then California is in great shape because the California Legislature has spent like a New Jersey politician for the past decade. As California tax revenues went down, California public employment went up. Medi-Cal went up. Anything and all things Californians said they needed – except tax cuts – were funded and immediately became sacrosanct, never to be cut, let alone eliminated.
After being ridiculed for his remarks about our economy, Folksy Joe then brought ridicule on the economy that serves as a model for Democrats, Russian socialism.
“They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable," Biden said in the interview.
"I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold," he said in an interview to The Wall Street Journal published Saturday.
Biden said Russia's economic difficulties are likely to make the Kremlin more willing to cooperate with the United States on a range of national security issues.
Not any more, Folksy Joe.
It starts at the top, of course. Obama put his foot in it when he stupidly said the Cambridge, Massachusetts cops “stupidly” arrested Gates. He not only put his foot in it, he then shot himself in the foot because he let all the air out he was trying to pump into creating socialized healthcare.
Just when he had everyone’s attention focused on healthcare, he made himself his own distraction.
Now a video just surfaced via the Drudge Report of Obama complaining to Randi Rhodes on “Air America” that the Bush Administration rushed legislation through before anyone had a chance to even read it, let alone debate it.
Talk about the “pot calling the kettle black.”
This cliché means that Obama is a hypocrite, and has nothing to do with race, quite unlike Obama’s remark about the Cambridge police officer.
The number one loose tongue, however, is and remains “Folksy” Joe Biden. Who can forget his “The government has to spend to keep from going bankrupt”? Liberal pundits were quick to come to his defense: “You know, it sounds funny, but the Vice President is right.”
Then California is in great shape because the California Legislature has spent like a New Jersey politician for the past decade. As California tax revenues went down, California public employment went up. Medi-Cal went up. Anything and all things Californians said they needed – except tax cuts – were funded and immediately became sacrosanct, never to be cut, let alone eliminated.
After being ridiculed for his remarks about our economy, Folksy Joe then brought ridicule on the economy that serves as a model for Democrats, Russian socialism.
“They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable," Biden said in the interview.
"I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold," he said in an interview to The Wall Street Journal published Saturday.
Biden said Russia's economic difficulties are likely to make the Kremlin more willing to cooperate with the United States on a range of national security issues.
Not any more, Folksy Joe.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Blue Dogs are not Pelosi’s “Amen Choir”
(Click on this for a larger, although still completely unintelligible chart of the Democrat plan for Obama Care)Democrat leaders want to do something that I would like them to do.
That’s usually not a good idea for Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and the usual Liberal Democrat leadership suspects are frustrated that the “Blue Dogs” (conservative Democrats) on Waxman’s House Energy and Commerce Committee want to exercise their rights to shape the Obamacare Bill more to their liking. (Link here)
Democrat leaders are appalled they would do that. If the “Inner Nancy” were allowed to speak, she would say to the Blue Dogs: “You mutts are here to approve my legislation, so keep your paws off. Now ‘sit!’”
Queen Nancy knows she’s the power behind the throne, and so does Obama.
Fortunately for taxpayers, and recipients of the best healthcare in the World, the Blue Dogs know their constituents didn’t elect them to be Liberal lapdogs. They know that the Republicans they replaced will be replacing them soon if they support Pelosi’s Liberal San Francisco Democrat agenda.
Democrat leadership would like to bypass the Blue Dogs on Waxman’s committee and have their healthcare bill voted on by the whole House. I whole-heartedly endorse this Democrat strategy.
Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats will defeat Obamacare when the full House votes, resulting in a double ding against Democrat leadership: an embarrassing defeat for Obama and Pelosi, destroying their healthcare reform credentials, and total alienation of the Democrat’s conservative wing. The Blue Dogs will lose all trust in their leaders, but their constituents will wonder why they elected them instead of Republicans in the first place?
As Democrats do the same to the United States that they’ve already done to California, a lot more voters will be asking the same question.
That’s usually not a good idea for Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and the usual Liberal Democrat leadership suspects are frustrated that the “Blue Dogs” (conservative Democrats) on Waxman’s House Energy and Commerce Committee want to exercise their rights to shape the Obamacare Bill more to their liking. (Link here)
Democrat leaders are appalled they would do that. If the “Inner Nancy” were allowed to speak, she would say to the Blue Dogs: “You mutts are here to approve my legislation, so keep your paws off. Now ‘sit!’”
Queen Nancy knows she’s the power behind the throne, and so does Obama.
Fortunately for taxpayers, and recipients of the best healthcare in the World, the Blue Dogs know their constituents didn’t elect them to be Liberal lapdogs. They know that the Republicans they replaced will be replacing them soon if they support Pelosi’s Liberal San Francisco Democrat agenda.
Democrat leadership would like to bypass the Blue Dogs on Waxman’s committee and have their healthcare bill voted on by the whole House. I whole-heartedly endorse this Democrat strategy.
Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats will defeat Obamacare when the full House votes, resulting in a double ding against Democrat leadership: an embarrassing defeat for Obama and Pelosi, destroying their healthcare reform credentials, and total alienation of the Democrat’s conservative wing. The Blue Dogs will lose all trust in their leaders, but their constituents will wonder why they elected them instead of Republicans in the first place?
As Democrats do the same to the United States that they’ve already done to California, a lot more voters will be asking the same question.
Rebuttal of Physicians for National Health Program Myths
(Click on this chart of "Obama Care" to see what a bureaucratic jungle the Democrats are planning. It will be more costly - naturally, it's a government program! - with the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the DMV.)A friend and neighbor sent a "copy and paste" essay to our local weekly newspaper, The Independent Coast Observer (ICO). This week they published my rebuttal, which is not complete since, unlike the article I'm rebutting, I'm actually gathering facts and including links to their sources. The following is my rebuttal so far:
The ICO could have saved over 1,000 words by just printing this link instead of the Open Space “Facts about single-payer care” article which was provided word for word by the very biased Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). However, since the ICO promoted the PNHP position, fairness and balance would indicate allowing space to point out its egregious errors and omissions. Here are just a few:
Myth: 50 million Americans (16%) are uninsured. Truth: The Census Bureau (2005) reports the number is 47 million. Of the 47 million, approximately 10 million are illegal aliens. Even Michael Moore agrees that being “an American” matters to get health insurance. Discussing “Sicko” on ABC’s “Nightline” Moore said: “That’s the only preexisting condition that should exist. I am an American. That’s it.”
Another 17 million make more than $50,000 per year (well above the median household income of $46,326). Why are households with above the median income uninsured? Forty-five percent of the uninsured will only be that way for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office, and 60% say they are in excellent or very good health. (Link here)
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report. Kaiser’s 8.2 million Americans (2.7%) chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more.
Myth: Private insurance administrative costs are high, and most are unnecessary. Truth: Medicare’s administrative costs are much higher than private insurance, and include far more unnecessary expenditures. (Link here) In 2005, Medicare's administrative costs were $509 per primary beneficiary, compared to private-sector administrative costs of $453.
Medicare’s costs are higher even though what the public plan advocates claim as Medicare costs do not even include enormous Medicare expenses, the largest of which is Medicare fraud and waste. Researchers at Dartmouth estimate that waste (including fraud) consumes about one-third of Medicare's costs. That is, to deliver $100 of frugal care, Medicare spends $150, $50 of which is for unnecessary use.
Knowing Americans are weak in math, advocates of a public plan assert that Medicare has administrative costs of 3 percent (or 6 to 8 percent if support from other government agencies is included), compared to 14 to 22 percent for private employer-sponsored health insurance (depending on which study is cited), or even more for individually purchased insurance. Why the difference? It’s simple math. Medicare patients are older and consume more expensive medical services than the average private insurance policy holder. When you divide the Medicare administrative cost numerator by the very large total cost denominator, you get a smaller administrative cost percentage, even if total administrative costs were identical for Medicare and private insurance.
This is compounded by Medicare not being charged or allocated costs that private insurers bear, such as state “premium taxes” that average two percent, and depreciation, maintenance and repairs, and utilities costs for offices in public buildings.Excluded Medicare administrative costs (from the American Medical Association Proposal for Reform) (Link here):
• Tax collection to fund Medicare—this is analogous to premium collection by private insurers, but whereas premium collection expenses of private insurers are rightly counted as administrative costs, tax collection expenses incurred by employers and the Internal Revenue Service do not appear in the official Medicare or NHE accounting systems and are overlooked
• Medicare program marketing, outreach and education
• Medicare program customer service
• Medicare program auditing by the Office of the Inspector General (which is costly but does little to eliminate the enormity of Medicare fraud)
• Medicare program contract negotiations
• Building costs of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) dedicated to the Medicare program• Staff salaries for CMS personnel with Medicare program responsibilities
• Congressional resources expended each year on setting Medicare payment rates for services
Myth: Medical bills contribute to half of all personal bankruptcies. Truth: Mortgage and rent payments, automobile payments, insurance, unemployment, over-exuberant credit card use, etc., “contribute” as much or more to personal bankruptcies than medical bills. (Link here) When other researchers analyzed the Harvard study that concluded half of all personal bankruptcies were related to medical bills, they found that only 17 percent were, and concluded that “medical debt is like any other debt -- a cause but not the most important cause of bankruptcy.”
The ICO could have saved over 1,000 words by just printing this link instead of the Open Space “Facts about single-payer care” article which was provided word for word by the very biased Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). However, since the ICO promoted the PNHP position, fairness and balance would indicate allowing space to point out its egregious errors and omissions. Here are just a few:
Myth: 50 million Americans (16%) are uninsured. Truth: The Census Bureau (2005) reports the number is 47 million. Of the 47 million, approximately 10 million are illegal aliens. Even Michael Moore agrees that being “an American” matters to get health insurance. Discussing “Sicko” on ABC’s “Nightline” Moore said: “That’s the only preexisting condition that should exist. I am an American. That’s it.”
Another 17 million make more than $50,000 per year (well above the median household income of $46,326). Why are households with above the median income uninsured? Forty-five percent of the uninsured will only be that way for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office, and 60% say they are in excellent or very good health. (Link here)
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report. Kaiser’s 8.2 million Americans (2.7%) chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more.
Myth: Private insurance administrative costs are high, and most are unnecessary. Truth: Medicare’s administrative costs are much higher than private insurance, and include far more unnecessary expenditures. (Link here) In 2005, Medicare's administrative costs were $509 per primary beneficiary, compared to private-sector administrative costs of $453.
Medicare’s costs are higher even though what the public plan advocates claim as Medicare costs do not even include enormous Medicare expenses, the largest of which is Medicare fraud and waste. Researchers at Dartmouth estimate that waste (including fraud) consumes about one-third of Medicare's costs. That is, to deliver $100 of frugal care, Medicare spends $150, $50 of which is for unnecessary use.
Knowing Americans are weak in math, advocates of a public plan assert that Medicare has administrative costs of 3 percent (or 6 to 8 percent if support from other government agencies is included), compared to 14 to 22 percent for private employer-sponsored health insurance (depending on which study is cited), or even more for individually purchased insurance. Why the difference? It’s simple math. Medicare patients are older and consume more expensive medical services than the average private insurance policy holder. When you divide the Medicare administrative cost numerator by the very large total cost denominator, you get a smaller administrative cost percentage, even if total administrative costs were identical for Medicare and private insurance.
This is compounded by Medicare not being charged or allocated costs that private insurers bear, such as state “premium taxes” that average two percent, and depreciation, maintenance and repairs, and utilities costs for offices in public buildings.Excluded Medicare administrative costs (from the American Medical Association Proposal for Reform) (Link here):
• Tax collection to fund Medicare—this is analogous to premium collection by private insurers, but whereas premium collection expenses of private insurers are rightly counted as administrative costs, tax collection expenses incurred by employers and the Internal Revenue Service do not appear in the official Medicare or NHE accounting systems and are overlooked
• Medicare program marketing, outreach and education
• Medicare program customer service
• Medicare program auditing by the Office of the Inspector General (which is costly but does little to eliminate the enormity of Medicare fraud)
• Medicare program contract negotiations
• Building costs of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) dedicated to the Medicare program• Staff salaries for CMS personnel with Medicare program responsibilities
• Congressional resources expended each year on setting Medicare payment rates for services
Myth: Medical bills contribute to half of all personal bankruptcies. Truth: Mortgage and rent payments, automobile payments, insurance, unemployment, over-exuberant credit card use, etc., “contribute” as much or more to personal bankruptcies than medical bills. (Link here) When other researchers analyzed the Harvard study that concluded half of all personal bankruptcies were related to medical bills, they found that only 17 percent were, and concluded that “medical debt is like any other debt -- a cause but not the most important cause of bankruptcy.”
(Medical bills - and fraud, waste, and abuse - have already contributed totally to one significant bankruptcy: Medicare.)
Myth: We pay for national health insurance, but don't get it. Truth: Workers pay 2.9 percent of their earnings into Medicare, which is already bankrupt (technically, not until 2017 when its mythical trust fund runs dry, but Medicare is already paying out more than it is taking in, even though the first Baby Boomer doesn’t start Medicare until 2011). The Medicare rate will have to be raised to 13.4 percent just to maintain promised benefits. (Link here)After adding on the inadequate12.4 percent for Social Security, workers will have to pay 25.8 percent of their pay (not tax deductible) before paying income, property, and sales taxes, plus exorbitant energy taxes to fund the futile battle against natural climate change.
Myth: Despite spending far less per capita for health care, Canadians are healthier and have better measures of access to health care than Americans. Truth: The 2002-03 Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health concluded, on average, health status in Canada and the U.S. is approximately equal. However, Canadians suffer long waits for many surgical procedures.
The Canadian Supreme Court struck down Quebec's law that prohibited private medical insurance, finding against having to wait a year for hip-replacement surgery. In finding for the plaintiffs, Canada's high court said, "The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public healthcare system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public healthcare...(and endure)… physical and psychological suffering that meets a threshold test of seriousness. Many patients on non-urgent waiting lists are in pain and cannot fully enjoy any real quality of life. The right to life and to personal inviolability is therefore affected by the waiting times." (Link here)
The rest of the PNHP article was similarly replete with misinformation which I will expose in even greater depth on my website (I'm working on it!)
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Deficits for Dummies
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government’s financial bailout programs, says that a series of bailouts, bank rescues and other economic lifelines could end up costing the federal government as much as $23 trillion– a staggering amount that is nearly double the nation’s entire economic output for a year.
Since the unfunded liability for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is triple Mr. Barofsky’s bailout estimate – more than the entire World’s economic output for a year – it’s interesting how Democrats and their enablers in the Main Stream Media avoid mentioning it. On the contrary, faced with Mr. Barofsky’s report and enormous unfunded liabilities, the Democrats want to blow trillions more on healthcare and energy “reform.” Their logic is probably that since their hole is so big, no one will notice they are still digging.
Unfortunately for Obama and his Prosperity Thieves, we will notice when the Democrats’ borrowing and spending causes “stagflation” – the old Carter era word for a stagnant economy coupled with inflation. Our taxes will go up along with unemployment, while tax revenues drop as total income falls. Inflation will eat up our investment values and property values will stall or fall.
Then, to compound the agony, the best healthcare system in the World will be trashed, and our industries and lifestyles will be destroyed in a futile attempt to stop natural climate change. We'll be a little bit warmer as we stand in long lines waiting for rationed healthcare to deny us hip replacement surgery because while we were waiting we became too old or feeble to pass the bureaucratic approval standards: "If you had hip replacement surgery five years ago, you would be OK, but now your body has deteriorated so much because of physical inactivity that an operation would be waste of scarce Universal Healthcare dollars."
Don't tell me this won't happen. I've already seen it happen to my buddy Arthur in England. His scheduled hip replacement was rescheduled year after year because England's National Health Service ran out of funds each year for surgeries to correct "non-life threatening" conditions, until finally a hip replacement wouldn't do him any good because of muscular atrophy.
You're next.
Since the unfunded liability for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is triple Mr. Barofsky’s bailout estimate – more than the entire World’s economic output for a year – it’s interesting how Democrats and their enablers in the Main Stream Media avoid mentioning it. On the contrary, faced with Mr. Barofsky’s report and enormous unfunded liabilities, the Democrats want to blow trillions more on healthcare and energy “reform.” Their logic is probably that since their hole is so big, no one will notice they are still digging.
Unfortunately for Obama and his Prosperity Thieves, we will notice when the Democrats’ borrowing and spending causes “stagflation” – the old Carter era word for a stagnant economy coupled with inflation. Our taxes will go up along with unemployment, while tax revenues drop as total income falls. Inflation will eat up our investment values and property values will stall or fall.
Then, to compound the agony, the best healthcare system in the World will be trashed, and our industries and lifestyles will be destroyed in a futile attempt to stop natural climate change. We'll be a little bit warmer as we stand in long lines waiting for rationed healthcare to deny us hip replacement surgery because while we were waiting we became too old or feeble to pass the bureaucratic approval standards: "If you had hip replacement surgery five years ago, you would be OK, but now your body has deteriorated so much because of physical inactivity that an operation would be waste of scarce Universal Healthcare dollars."
Don't tell me this won't happen. I've already seen it happen to my buddy Arthur in England. His scheduled hip replacement was rescheduled year after year because England's National Health Service ran out of funds each year for surgeries to correct "non-life threatening" conditions, until finally a hip replacement wouldn't do him any good because of muscular atrophy.
You're next.
Friday, July 17, 2009
"Folksy Joe" Biden, Humorist
This was the Drudge Report headline link July 17, 2009 to “Folksy Joe” Biden: 'WE HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO KEEP FROM GOING BANKRUPT'
Here’s what Folksy Joe said at an AARP event in Alexandria, Va.:
“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable. It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.
“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”
Just above Folksy Joe’s headline, Drudge linked: CBO: Federal budget is on unsustainable path..., in which the Director of the Congressional Budget Office explained that current spending, and the resultant enormous increase in public debt, has put “…the federal budget … on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run.”
Just above the CBO Director’s report, Drudge linked: UPDATE: Senator quashes department's bid for cartoonist... The Treasury Department had wanted to hire a cartoonist to “… conduct two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress.”
The ad was cancelled when they found they didn’t need to hire a humorist, they could just have someone read Folksy Joe’s remarks at their meetings.
Here’s what Folksy Joe said at an AARP event in Alexandria, Va.:
“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable. It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.
“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”
Just above Folksy Joe’s headline, Drudge linked: CBO: Federal budget is on unsustainable path..., in which the Director of the Congressional Budget Office explained that current spending, and the resultant enormous increase in public debt, has put “…the federal budget … on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run.”
Just above the CBO Director’s report, Drudge linked: UPDATE: Senator quashes department's bid for cartoonist... The Treasury Department had wanted to hire a cartoonist to “… conduct two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress.”
The ad was cancelled when they found they didn’t need to hire a humorist, they could just have someone read Folksy Joe’s remarks at their meetings.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Good Ideas for Health Care Reform
There are a lot of good ideas for reforming health care.
Unfortunately, the Democrats don't know any.
Healthcare should be reformed to improve portability, affordability, and availability.
The Democrats, a wholly owned subsidiary of the labor unions, will never bite the bullet for real reform, which simply is to end the exemption of employer-provided healthcare from income taxation.
From my readings of taxation documentation, it is abundantly clear that all compensation is taxable, except that which is excluded by Congress. Why some is excluded has everything to do with politics, and nothing to do with tax equity. The same congress people that mount soapboxes and proclaim their progressive principles never give a thought that exempting employer-provided healthcare is the largest and one of the most regressive special interest tax breaks.
Employees who think they're getting a good deal by having their employers provide healthcare should think again. For example, I worked for Lockheed Corporation after retiring from the Air Force. As a military retiree, I had lifetime medical coverage for myself, my wife, and children until they completed college or turned 18 if they didn't go on to college. Lockheed also insisted on providing me and my family healthcare, and when I told them I was already covered and that they could just pay me what they would be paying for healthcare, they said they didn't work that way. So there I was, getting something of no value to me, getting no use from a "benefit" that had its cost deducted from my compensation. In essence, I was forced to pay hundreds of dollars a month for nothing.
Another example. A Lockheed co-worker had a great offer of employment with a Silicon Valley hi-tech company, but couldn’t take it because his wife had a medical condition that would make it impossible for him to get health insurance when he left Lockheed.
Just at Lockheed there were examples galore of employees not getting full value or control from their Lockheed-provided medical coverage.
Hoever, when you enter the world of the self-employed you find that employees provided health care by their employers don't have a lot to gripe about, since they get tax-subsidized healthcare, and the self-employed don't. To further rub it in, the self-employed also get to help subsidize the healthcare of others through their taxes and their higher healthcare premiums (since they don't have the clout with the insurers of the big employers).
Unfortunately, the Democrats don't know any.
Healthcare should be reformed to improve portability, affordability, and availability.
The Democrats, a wholly owned subsidiary of the labor unions, will never bite the bullet for real reform, which simply is to end the exemption of employer-provided healthcare from income taxation.
From my readings of taxation documentation, it is abundantly clear that all compensation is taxable, except that which is excluded by Congress. Why some is excluded has everything to do with politics, and nothing to do with tax equity. The same congress people that mount soapboxes and proclaim their progressive principles never give a thought that exempting employer-provided healthcare is the largest and one of the most regressive special interest tax breaks.
Employees who think they're getting a good deal by having their employers provide healthcare should think again. For example, I worked for Lockheed Corporation after retiring from the Air Force. As a military retiree, I had lifetime medical coverage for myself, my wife, and children until they completed college or turned 18 if they didn't go on to college. Lockheed also insisted on providing me and my family healthcare, and when I told them I was already covered and that they could just pay me what they would be paying for healthcare, they said they didn't work that way. So there I was, getting something of no value to me, getting no use from a "benefit" that had its cost deducted from my compensation. In essence, I was forced to pay hundreds of dollars a month for nothing.
Another example. A Lockheed co-worker had a great offer of employment with a Silicon Valley hi-tech company, but couldn’t take it because his wife had a medical condition that would make it impossible for him to get health insurance when he left Lockheed.
Just at Lockheed there were examples galore of employees not getting full value or control from their Lockheed-provided medical coverage.
Hoever, when you enter the world of the self-employed you find that employees provided health care by their employers don't have a lot to gripe about, since they get tax-subsidized healthcare, and the self-employed don't. To further rub it in, the self-employed also get to help subsidize the healthcare of others through their taxes and their higher healthcare premiums (since they don't have the clout with the insurers of the big employers).
As usual, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute have intensively studied this issue and proposed thoughtful solutions. The Cato proposal of Large Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) would be a perfect reform: it would be portable, flexible, only involve tweaking the existing HSA legislation, and would reintroduce market forces into healthcare to promote competition and affordability.
To learn more, go here for the Cato Institute analysis and proposal, and here for the Heritage Foundation.
You'll never get this information from Democrats or the Main Stream Media because they know that knowledge is power, and to them Americans' ignorance is bliss.
We Beat Global Warming!
"The Group of Eight industrialized nations joined with developing countries in agreeing Wednesday that average global temperatures shouldn't increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius in a significant new acknowledgement in the fight against global warming."
Thirty years of NASA satellite measurement show that, as of June 2009, we are essentially back to the temperatures of 1979. For those wishing to dispute the satellite numbers, they come from the same NASA that gives us James Hansen, the Apostle of Man-Caused Global Warming.
Thirty years of NASA satellite measurement show that, as of June 2009, we are essentially back to the temperatures of 1979. For those wishing to dispute the satellite numbers, they come from the same NASA that gives us James Hansen, the Apostle of Man-Caused Global Warming.This is wonderful news, since even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has steadily reduced their warming estimates: "In 1996 a new IPCC prediction was for an increase of 0.8 degrees to 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 - less than half the warming in twice the time."
This was followed by: "A U.S. government survey of the global climate model literature predicted even less warming - between 0.5 degrees and 2.0 degrees Celsius by 2100."
James Hansen, whose 1988 pronouncements started the clamor for action to prevent global warming, wrote in the 1998 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that "the forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."
Now Hansen is even more forthright:
This was followed by: "A U.S. government survey of the global climate model literature predicted even less warming - between 0.5 degrees and 2.0 degrees Celsius by 2100."
James Hansen, whose 1988 pronouncements started the clamor for action to prevent global warming, wrote in the 1998 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that "the forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."
Now Hansen is even more forthright:
Mr. Hansen, I'm sure you have his number, so would be so kind as to tell Mr. Gore all this so we can get on to solving real problems?Urging caution regarding “implausible” and “unduly pessimistic” IPCC climate scenarios, NASA’s Hansen opts for observations to guide his forecasts of a 0.75ºC temperature rise by the year 2050.
NASA’s James Hansen, who is widely credited as being the “father of global warming” recently wrote that the climate change scenarios put forth in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) “may be unduly pessimistic,” and that the IPCC extreme scenarios are “implausible.” In fact, he argues, the observed trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations for the past several years fall below all IPCC scenarios, so consequently future temperature rise will most like be about 0.75ºC during the next 50 years.
Hansen makes these claims in articles including “Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb,” which appeared in the March Scientific American. He bases his conclusions on simple empirical evidence that he considers more precise and reliable than model results “because it includes all the processes operating in the real world, even those we have not yet been smart enough to include in the models.”
Like Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security unfunded liabilities of over $80 trillion, and they come due long before 2100.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Al Gore's Twenty Feet-In-Mouth Problem
Going shopping with Al.Some things are so obvious they're hard to see.
For example, the most dramatic part of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was the scenes of flooded city streets and the ominous prediction of a 20-foot rise in sea levels by 2100. According to Al, this was the most damaging aspect of global warming, and the reason that "Something must be done, and it must be done now!"
Al continues to beat the panic drum, now comparing inaction on stopping global warming to inaction on stopping Nazi Germany. And the reason we must do it now, of course, is that awful flooding is eminent.
What else could make us join his march to save the world at great expense and loss of economic progress? The threat that the growing season will be longer? That crops will grow better and make better use of water resources? That the thundering herds that voted for global warming with their feet by moving south won't have to move as far now? That the world may become as warm as during the Holocene Climate Optimum of 5,000 to 9,000 years ago, when civilization began and thrived?
Maybe Al intends to rally us to the cry, "Turn back the Industrial Revolution!" He wants us to repudiate the mastery of energy that enabled us to transition from man power, t0 animal power, then wind and water power, and now to the unlimited, inexhaustible power of the atom.
To do that, Al knows that he has only one threat capable of generating unthinking panic. Just as in the Bible God sent The Deluge, Al has invoked The Sea Rise. And just as God had to get the deed done quickly - make it rain for forty days and forty nights - so Al too must make the future bleak, if not for ourselves then for our grandchildren.
A twenty-foot rise in a hundred years should do the trick.
However, Al has a problem, the snowline altitude.
The snowline altitude is the altitude of the lowest elevation interval in which minimum annual snow cover exceeds 50%. This ranges from about 5,500 metres above sea-level at the equator down to sea level at about 70° N&S latitude, depending on regional temperature amelioration effects. Permafrost then appears at sea level and extends deeper below sea level polewards.
As most of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lie above the snowline and/or base of the permafrost zone, they cannot melt in a timeframe much less than several millennia; therefore it is likely that they will not, through melting, contribute significantly to sea level rise in the coming century. They can, however, do so through acceleration in flow and enhanced iceberg calving.
The fact that the Antarctica and Greenland snowlines will prevent rapid ice cap melt for thousands of years is so obvious that it is easy to overlook. Right, Al?
Without the rapid and massive melting of these ice caps, sea level increases will largely be limited to the thermal expansion of the oceans. As any fool soon learns from comparing the volume of the oceans to the solar energy necessary to drive expansion, this too is a long, slow process.
This is not to deny that sea levels rise during warming, since it has been often mentioned in my previous blog posts that they have risen over 400 feet in the past 18,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, an average of two feet per century. My point in constantly revisiting this is that previous greater warming of much greater ice sheets did not produce the sea level increases predicted by Apolcalyptic Al.
If not then, why now, Al?
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